Cerated Edge: A Waxen Salve To Cure The Curse
by Quillon42
Summary: Considers the PC game Waxworks for Amiga and DOS from 1992 here and looks into an alternate reality wherein a more peaceful solution is devised to end the gypsy Ixona's curse. All of this comes about from the hero taking advice from a certain someone pertaining to the presumed enemy.


(First, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Back to the Future (Part II) Day (Technically this day celebrates the second film, with the whole 10/21/15 thing, but anyways). It just occurred to me today, as I'm finishing this story, that I might want to do a BTTF story this year as well…I may end up doing one in December this year, as I need to watch all three films again in the meantime. For now, I'm posting something from the Wax in place of the Backs (i.e. the DeLorean exploits; hope you all enjoy this one.)

CERATED EDGE: A WAXEN SALVE TO CURE THE CURSE

By Quillon42

Leerily the skewered skeleton gazed with sightless eye sockets as it stared from its ersatz onyx-scummed cesspool…stared upon the close-to-triumphant twin who was about to will himself into her own little jinxy world of warped justice.

As it was, though, in this reality…this adventurer who was the brother other than the trance-traced-out, hexed Alex…something greater defended him against his doom in this reality than the familiar four trinkets which Uncle Boris had called upon him to extract from each of the exhibits.

Those cognizant of this computer game's world were aware that the non-Alex modern knight who nobly navigated the waxworks…this hero spanned a small yet sordid assortment of settings in which the mazes of so many labyrinthine corridors and byways, and the messes of so much lurid carnage and butchery (either of the enemy, or much more often of his own save-file-restorable self), it had all made for the most traumatic experiences both for the wax-wayfarer himself, as well as for the scarred schoolboy who probably controlled said wayfarer circa 1992 or so.

Going along varied vicious generation spans of gore spatter, there was the first couple of cursed brothers, deriving all the way back from ancient Egypt. Somehow, even though the bloodline in no time became as white as the driven snow, this horribly-hexed family had its roots in Northern Africa. Anyhow, these Biblical siblings came to blows basically over the affection of an entrancing princess, who despite purity of origins and nobility of heritage had resembled Robert Smith from The Cure.

Regardless, each sib salivated for this sister, and it so happened that the better brother had to lumber along the lethal levels of his evil counterpart's pyramid, in order to rescue the somewhat guy-Goth-looking gal by the next sunrise. For the hopeful hero, he would do it all, from avoiding Indiana Jonesy boulders to tapping tuning forks against primeval plexiglass, shirking past the former and shattering the latter proceed. In time, all the dungeon's denizens from crocodile to caliph fell to the boy's bitter blades, and the princess and an amulet artifact were his to enjoy.

Of course, seconds later the terrific twin found himself back in his uncle's museum, with only the trinket and not the temptress in tow. Ah, well, he would think to himself, as he minded the morbid yet musclebound butler bullying him along to the next exhibit…perhaps he would be able to make more time with the next maiden, upon the following success, before warping back to his own world. And again, the entombed enchantress from the pyramid wasn't all that irresistible anyway.

A woman far more winsome—as much as she was treacherous, anyway—was the old-school escort of ill repute who stalked the streets of Victorian London at night…just as a particular dispatcher of similar damsels did, around that same time. Indeed, the eighth of the evil hex-hampered brothers was none other than Jack the Ripper himself—the old gypsy Ixona's jinx only empowering him all the more to work at the atrocious trade for which he so prided himself.

It was of course up to the killer's kin to bring down the infamous offender, here the hero being a bloke decked out as dapperly as the dastard himself. Because of this, the Ripper-rustler had to stealth his way through the midnight-azure avenues of the town, taking care to fraternize only with fallen ladies and fops, and avoid more decent people who massed themselves into murderous mobs, as well as bobbies who sought to bring the prurient psychopath to an all-too-speedy, noose-worthy trial.

Through it all, the nephew of the ominous Uncle Boris pulled through, and after a protracted bladed duel with the Ripper (whereupon the latter wielded what seemed to be a leviathan of a lunchbox, to assist in defending against his virtuous opponent's strikes), the twin emerged victorious with the vicious ruffian's razor as a trophy. Yet all of this would not have been possible without the assistance of a particular call girl who was as well-versed in betrayal as she was in beauty and bawdiness. Although this same Molly Parkin had duplicitously ended up putting out the prevailer, onto the same pier as Jack himself, it was in a way exactly what the wax-traversing warrior had wanted, and soon he found himself back at the museum with a second treasure in hand and himself one step closer to liberating his oblivion-beleaguered brother.

The next part of the evil-embattled bloodline that was waxworthy in Uncle Boris's estimation had been the necromancer who coopted a cemetery, perhaps somewhere in Eastern Europe, and filled it with tons of the undead. More specifically, topside there were trudging ghouls with either frizzy fruity wisps of platinum blonde hair from the Eighties Decade of the Twentieth Century (even though this was the time of the fifth line of cursed siblings, seemingly somewhere around the sixteenth century thereabouts)…or otherwise the ominous enemies sported darker shanks and resembled emaciated manifestations of Jack Black—though unlike said thespian's most recent cinematic outing, these Jacks gave both hero and homebound computer player much more trouble than goosebumps.

What was worse had been that a vampire had lurked in the house of God close to the graveyard, which made for the most horrific and hazardous blasphemy. Even more sullying to the soul was the fact that for the most part, the waxstepping hero sibling had to pick through all the enemies leading up to the bloodsucker with nothing more than a semblance of a sickle—really just the most primitive of pruning shears, to so snip a limb here and trim a head there, when what was really required to navigate the nasty-infested necropolis was an effing farming combine, and not the scantest of scythes. Fortunately the mausoleum pilgrim that was the good brother found sustenance from someone there—a rather supine sort of succor, actually, as a butchered babe there had given him her heart, literally, so that that he might live on beyond so many brutal bruises.

Beyond the threats above, in any case, the noodge who opposed the necromancer—the former ostensibly a gravedigger recovering his shovel, despite the fact that he appeared in the upper left hand of the player's screen and in a couple of death endings as a fully-ordained minister—said avatar eventually overcame the evils oppressing him. More particularly he did so with the help of Druec, a dude who was the first of the good brothers to suffer under the curse, as well as other righteous recruits from the varied generations of the waxwalker's lineage. Together with help from an intervening incantation from Uncle Boris, the cemetery-caretaking clergyman channeled the good victimized souls into the chest of the necromancer Vladimir and boiled the bastard down to baby size. From this foray, the hero found a reward in the ring of the wily wizard, and with this he'd hoped to erase the enchantment upon Alex all the more effectively.

Last up amongst this quartet of quease was the subterranean schematic of mine tunnels, presumably somewhere in Texas or thereabouts. Here there had been no mistaking as to whether the bolder brother was a digger as against a deacon, for example, as he had for certain filled the shoes of a safety inspector ancestor who delved into the depths of the darkness to seek his sibling, who through bouts of black magic had devolved into a vile, viridian leviathan of Lovecraftian proportions. Though the trip to this Cthulhuan critter had measured only so many kilometers, what made it such a challenge was the toughness of the transmogrified townspeople, who themselves had mutated into pernicious plant persons…as well as the fact that the toolshed implements said inspector had to combat the creatures were all but availing for the most part down there.

Indeed, it had been all the waxwarper could do to begin to break the lime chitin of any of those creeps, with the pick, shovel, or fucking screwdriver that was at his disposal. More often than not, the representative of safety had been slaughtered again and again in the most graphic of manners, from having his features scored raw with claws or spored to saturation with sinister seeds…to suffering suffocation most severe from the fumes of nearby polluting pods…to having his head to his hands to his haunches drawn and quartered in the clutches of so many vicious vines. To be sure, there was a pesticide available too in both vanilla and flame flavors, to dispatch the dregs expeditiously…but there were only so many servings at the hero's disposal, and by the time he reached the amoral, archevil artichoke that was the bad brother of this time period, the better bro was back down to the most weaksauce of weapons.

In the end, it was a team effort to fuck up the foliage in the mine. Were it not for the assistance of the enterprising engineer to fix the elevator, the surly soldier to destroy the shaft, and most of all the daring doctor to patch up all the do-gooders, not a solitary one of the humans down there would have emerged alive. Fortunately the cooperation of all these compadres helped the hero get topside in no time, and with an acidic sample of the baser brother's blood. When all was said and done, it was such a relief to defeat that seventh brother and see the truck that would take the mine personnel to a secure place—all while the hero harkened back once more to his family's freakish museum.

(And yes, according to the main narrative here, the mine crawl involved the seventh pair of siblings, while the London excursion involved the eighth…because everyone knows that pickup trucks were of course around before the time of Jack the Fucking Ripper.)

Anyways, now the one who was so wax-weary, after exposure to all these exhibits…he looked once more into the celadon crystal ball, through which his Uncle had been counseling him all this time. Boris had been so benevolent, his gaze still warming the hero from beyond the grave, even if the uncle bobbed his head and nodded pertly every three seconds while addressing his nephew. Verily the adventuring youth waited for the elder to utter one of the perpetual "Mm-Hmm"s of the peculiar protagonist of the Nineties film _Sling Blade_ …as goofy as Uncle Boris looked with that constant, needling nod. But not wishing to tarry on such details now, especially as the tuxedoed orangutan minding the museum door was about to push the hero about once more…

…the better brother checked the satchel that had been upon him, bestowed by his other, more helpful benefactress…and he entered into the fifth and final waxwork.

Once the hero caught sight of the scene in which the witch Ixona was restrained by the tree stump, with his ancestor about to strike with the cleaver, the former looked around some more a second, took note of the crossbow nearby…and ignored it.

Instead he whisked up an offscreen mirror, placed there by the lady who lent him her hand in every level heretofore, and he forced the ruffians of his family to look within and espy the injustice they were effecting upon the hapless gypsy.

In place of the amulet, the waxwinder showed Ixona the talisman that the Egyptian princess preferred, and the outcast termagant, recognizing the symbols thereon as reflective of her own family's crest, held her tongue against cursing anyone all the more.

Rather than splash the crone with the mineshaft acid, the good brother utilized the medical kit that the Texan doctor prescribed, a waxen salve of a cerate in fact here to heal the hoary hoyden's hand from the nick she just caught from the cleaver (as while she wasn't maimed here, she was still injured a tiny bit by the brother's forefather).

Forgoing the flashy knife of the Ripper, the explorer of exhibits pulled out the small coin purse granted him by the haughty harlot in London…and through this he paid for the chicken that Ixona tried to filch from the vindictive commoners.

Finally, forgetting the ring from the Necromancer now, the aider of Alex had proffered the blood-pumping organ of the dead damsel from the cemetery, the body part still possessing enough energy to convince all around to metaphorically "have a heart" and cease their persecution of the brazen sorceress.

And through all of this, a superior, more peaceful, utterly curse-free solution had been devised and executed—the brainchild of one Oxana, who had been the _twin sister_ of Ixona.

…And who, in another life, had been a youthful girl in a particular ancient Pharaoh's nobility.

…And who, in another life, had been a fallen woman streetwalker in Nineteenth Century England.

…And who, in another life, had been a belle brought low far too soon in Eastern Europe, during the reign of a ruthless revenant-wrangling warlock.

…And who, in another life, had been a medic with mettle, and had kept her wits even in the midst of a smothering, cruel-kudzu-ed mission underneath the Earth's surface.

BESTEST ENDING

Approaching the waxworn better brother while still in the time of Ixona, the other sister beamed, she a nonagenarian as well but one with a glorious, heavenly glint in her eye.

"For listening to all of my future selves throughout the course of your quest, and solving the problem between my people and yours in a peaceful way, I will reward you in the most gratifying manner imaginable.

"You will not even have to choose which of my incarnations with whom to seek carnal knowledge, as I shall allow you to, how people of your time say…'get with' them all. From Molly Parkin to the Doc underground…even the graveyard gal (if you're into that sort of necrophiliac nooky sort of thing) and, of course, the Princess of the Pharaohs who looks like that chap who did 'Just Like Heaven.'"

The centuries-old codgeress motioned for the hero to head back to the temporal portal from which he spawned. "Go ahead…Alex can sleep a little longer in the meantime."

And so the waxmaster made off with each of the erogenous allies who helped him respectively through each exhibit. Proudly he proceeded from the present-day museum, anyone in the vicinity able to make out the linked shadows of protagonist and princess and physician and prostitute and prostrate-passedaway-person (the last of these being dragged a bit unceremoniously along the grass as they went…but still they all went along unimpededly, hand in hand in hand in hand in hand).

ALTERNATE ENDING

Cheerily Oxana approached the waxworker of family-freeing miracles, the sparkle in her eye a bit snarkier this time now.

A minute or two after explaining the hero's reward here: "You can have all of my respective selves across time…

"Starting with _me."_

Then the asphyxiating embrace of the ninety-year-old beldam, whose baneful body odor overcame Alex's other brother more quickly than any pyramid poison cloud or mine miasma ever could. The Cthulhuan chapter's driving death dirge in fact played through the better brother's brain as he blacked out into oblivion once again.

(And the whole B.O. bugaboo here would have brought about the same adverse aroma, had the embracer been female or male; feminist readers, relax.)

Play Again? Y/N


End file.
